USING TABLEBUILDER

For general information relating to the TableBuilder or instructions on how to use features of the TableBuilder product, please refer to the TableBuilder, User Guide (cat. no. 1406.0.55.005).

More specific information applicable to the Labour Force Status and Other Characteristics of Families TableBuilder, which should enable users to understand, interpret and tabulate the data, is outlined below.

CONFIDENTIALITY FEATURES IN TABLEBUILDER

In accordance with the Census and Statistics Act 1905, all the data in TableBuilder are subjected to a confidentiality process before release. This confidentiality process is undertaken to avoid releasing information that may allow the identification of particular individuals, families, households, dwellings or businesses.

Processes used in TableBuilder to confidentialise records include the following:

• perturbation of data; and
• table suppression

Perturbation Effects

To minimise the risk of identifying families in aggregate statistics, a technique is used to randomly adjust cell values. This technique is called perturbation. Perturbation involves small random adjustments of the statistics and is considered the most satisfactory technique for avoiding the release of identifiable statistics while maximising the range of information that can be released. These adjustments have a negligible impact on the underlying pattern of the statistics.

The introduction of these random adjustments may result in tables not adding up. As a result, randomly adjusted individual cells will be consistent across tables, but the totals in any table may not be the sum of the individual cell values. The size of the difference between summed cells and the relevant total will generally be very small.

Please be aware that the effects of perturbing the data may result in components being larger than their totals. This includes determining proportions.

Table suppression

Some tables generated within TableBuilder may contain a substantial proportion of very low counts within cells (excluding cells that have counts of zero). When this occurs, all values within the table are suppressed in order to preserve confidentiality. The following error message below is displayed (in red) at the bottom of the table when table suppression has occurred.

ERROR: The table has been suppressed as it is too sparse
ERROR: table cell values have been suppressed

COUNTING UNITS AND WEIGHTS

Weighting is the process of adjusting results from a sample survey to infer results for the total population. To do this, a 'weight' is allocated to each record. The weight is the value that indicates how many family units are represented by each sample unit.

As just one level of weight is used, TableBuilder will apply 'Family level' by default.

When creating a table the Reference year will be a mandatory item. The default setting is all available years (2009-2019); this can be changed by users.

SELECTING DATA ITEMS FOR CROSS–TABULATION

The file contains a range of data items detailing the characteristics of the family including demographic characteristics of parents, family type, employment characteristics of parents and number of children and dependants by age.

Cross-tabulating Data items

Cross-tabulating data from various items will produce data about families. For example, cross-tabulating `'State or territory of usual residence' by the 'Hours worked by husband or partner' produces a table showing the number of families usually resident in each state and territory by the hours that the husband or partner worked.

For more information on definitions and concepts that apply to the data items in this file, please refer to Labour Force Status and Other Characteristics of Families (cat. no. 6224.0.55.001). and Labour Force, Australia (cat. no. 6202.0).